The bottle of knowledge and the kindled desire for truth

From The Essay on Listening to Lectures by Plutarch.  

For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth. Imagine, then, that a man should need to get fire from a neighbour, and, upon finding a big bright fire there, should stay there continually warming himself; just so it is if a man comes to another to share the benefit of a discourse, and does not think it necessary to kindle from it some illumination for himself and some thinking of his own, but, delighting in the discourse, sits enchanted; he gets, as it were, a bright and ruddy glow in the form of opinion imparted to him by what is said, but the mouldiness and darkness of his inner mind he has not dissipated nor banished by the warm glow of philosophy.

Finally, if there be need of any other instruction in regard to listening to a lecture, it is that it is necessary to keep in mind what has here been said, and to cultivate independent thinking along with our learning, so that we may acquire a habit of mind that is not sophistic or bent on acquiring mere information, but one that is deeply ingrained and philosophic, as we may do if we believe that right listening is the beginning of right living.

The analogy of a bottle to be filled versus a fire to be lit is popular in education circles and it does capture an important consideration.  There is a passionate desire that the job of teachers should be primarily that of igniting the kindling.  They want to believe that their job is to kindle the ardent pursuit of truth, to teach critical thinking, to foster imagination.  This is frequently characterized with the commitment "We will not teach you what to think, we will teach you how to think."

All well and good in theory rarely achieved in practice.  The heavy lifting of teaching is in the acquisition of facts.  Refocus on critical thinking and teachers can shirk the hard work and play at the fun stuff.  And once you move away from teaching facts and don't understand how to teach an ardent and effective pursuit of truth, you often end up teaching the teacher's beliefs.  Teaching one's personal feelings is much easier than teaching facts or teaching fact finding.  

Rote acquisition of static knowledge is, on its own, not an education.  The Gradgrinds of the world seek to fill the bottle of the mind with disconnected and contextless facts.  A horse is a mere thing, not an idea, a concept, a category, an inspiration.  From Hard Times by Charles Dickens.

“Bitzer,” said Thomas Gradgrind. “Your definition of a horse.”

“Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.” Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

“Now girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “You know what a horse is.”

You begin with facts  But they are only the beginning.  

It is also true that an ardent desire for the truth is, on its own, not an education.  Logic, reason, and  empiricism, in pursuit of the truth is also inadequate.  You must have facts, you must have evidence.  

The two together are required, both the bottle of knowledge and the kindled desire for truth.  It is as if one were to try and build a wall with only brick or only cement.  It cannot be done well.  You need both.

One cannot help but feel that in some fields in some universities, that they have devolved into a state that is both fact free and indifferent to the truth.  The fields most influenced by deconstructionism, postmodernism, and the social science of Karl Marx.  All they accomplish are strident declarations of sincerely felt beliefs devoid of facts, reason, evidence, empiricism or logic.  

And we can see some of this in the recent institutional failures of Covid-19 in which central experts insisted that there was a mere bottle of knowledge to be filled and that there was no role for a kindled hunger for truth.  Citizens seeking to use facts, reason, evidence, empiricism and logic to seek the truth were deemed stochastic terrorists, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, etc. All for seeking truth.  

It didn't help that the authoritarian public health people were seeking to fill the bottle of "knowledge" with words which did not actually reflect the facts.  The awkward transition from "Get vaccinated so that you won't catch Covid, won't transmit Covid, and won't get sick or die from Covid" to the factual "Get vaccinated and it won't prevent you from getting covid, won't stop you from transmitting Covid, and will increase the chances of survival for only a minority of people while increasing deaths from other causes to an unknown degree" illumined how empty the bottle was of facts.